Three years ago, I was sorting through my records and said to myself, “why do I have so much Joan Baez? I haven’t even listened to these.” Realizing that there were many other records I also hadn’t played. I started this very blog, anticipating that it’d take me about a year to get through my 400 piece collection. I was wrong, and it’s taken me three years to get to the very discography that inspired the project in the first place.

But Joan Baez’s self titled debut is in no danger of leaving my shelf anytime soon. If you’re familiar with Baez’s relationship with Bob Dylan, you won’t come across any surprises as she finger picks and warbles through a collection of traditional folk tunes. It’s a well played and pleasant album, but her lilting voice is deceptive, as there’s a venom in Baez’s performances that you don’t notice until she’s already poisoned you. It’s all over the song selection, which leans heavily towards tales of failed suitors and beautiful women with zero lyrical gender reassignment surgery. “I married me a pretty wife,” she sings, no doubt winking at the appalled conservatives gawking at her. She sings of crimes committed (House of the Rising Sun, Mary Hamilton), Biblical plagues (Little Moses), and her mother who was not above murdering her daughter’s gentleman callers (Silver Dagger). Aurally, this never raises a fuss, but this is riot grrl’s great grandma.